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ArchiCAD Training Session Notes

QUESTION

ANSWER SUMMARY AND NOTES

START TIME

Modeling buildings with split levels

The caller wanted to understand how split levels related to story settings, and the relationships with slabs intersecting walls. Eric draws a split level building to demonstrate this. During the demonstration he goes to floor plan display and shows what using “symbolic cut” achieves (it is the simplest way to have items show that are above the cutting plane). Eric then shows how confusing situations can arise on plan when you have (say for example) a window directly above another window (i.e. plan showing two windows on top of each other). To stop these kind of issues arising, Eric shows how you can control the visibility of split level construction in terms of cutting plane.

0:01:27

ArchiCAD tip: On the layout sheet you can bring in two different cut plane plan heights of the same building. Once in the layout sheet you can then crop off the features (or half) you don’t require and then merge (or rather snap) the two halves showing the different cut planes together Thus you now have a combined story with information from two different settings.

0:16:30

Can you and should you create a seperate story for a split level

Yes, you can create a story for a split level, but there are some issues with that – one issue that comes to Eric’s mind is stairs. Because stairs have options to show on the story above or below, but if you go to an intermediate story, then you are actually spanning three stories and the controls for the visibility become more tricky and less automatic. Eric suggests creating a graphic that looks like a story level may be an acceptable solution. Eric opens the section settings (right click and select selction settings in a section view) and opens up story levels to find out what the pen type and line type etc are set at. Eric then goes to the line tool, and sets it for the exact settings that the story level is using and he manually draws a story level in for the split level.

0:30:00

Creating a foundation and how to manipulate the story level settings for the created foundation

First Eric draws a foundation and describes what “elevation” and “height to next”, do in the story settings. Then he shows how to use the “trace and reference” palette to model on the foundation story, so he can see where the walls are (on the stories above) for precise modeling. Remember when you have finished using the trace and reference palette make sure you turn off the “make fills and zones transparent” feature otherwise when you later add fills etc. to your drawing you won’t be able to see them. Eric then shows how to turn off the story level marker in section (but still leave the plan view of the story) – right click on the navigator>story settings>uncheck the tick for the level markers. Eric shows what can cause material outlines to show in section: if you have say two slabs stacked on top of each other, with each made from different materials, then the outlines of both materials will show (leaving the line where they join showing), if you want the two different slabs to merge together with just one outline (as opposed to two) then make sure that both slabs have the same material. Eric has produced a more detailed video on this topic – see link on right.

0:35:40

Creating a complex profile of a foundation wall

Eric shows how to make a complex wall profile of a foundation wall, and he also shows how to make a composite (material) complex profile wall (by making a composite wall and then right clicking on it and selecting “capture profile of selection”, you can now make a complex profile using all the skins of the composite.

0:55:15

Bringing in a dwg. survey into ArchiCAD

Start

1:13:28

Explaination of “merge”, “attach xref” and “place external drawing” in relation to bringing in a surveyor’s dwg. file. A problem with “merge” is you bring in everything with that file, so say for example there are 100 layers, then you will bring in a hundred layers. With “attach xref” command you can’t edit the file when you bring it in (it acts like an xref in AutoCAD), but you can turn layers on or off. Until recently when you used the “place external drawing”, command you would see everything that was turned on when the drawing was saved, but in the last couple of versions of ArchiCAD there is an option in the drawing settings where you can turn on/off the embedded layers. This gives you all the controls of an xref in regards to layer management, and yet it doesn’t require layer management, it is controlled by the drawing itself. Eric’s tip is “place external drawing” because it is the simplest to manage, and yet it still gives you flexibility. Another tip Eric gives is open up the dwg. file in a separate ArchiCAD file and from here you can manipulate the file (for example delete unnecessary layers).

Eric explains how the attribute manager can help with organizing layers: options>element attributes>attribute manager

1:23:28

Setting up the surveyor’s dwg mesh in ArchiCAD, regarding stories to sea level (caller wants to be able to do spot elevations on the survey directly – without using math)

To set your levels go to – options>project preferences>reference levels

1:25:40

Eric has explained terrain modeling in detail: see links to tutorials on the right